So, for those of you who had seen my old studio setup knew it was cluttered and the shooting table not terribly large. It worked great, but for anything longer (like a sheridan or rifle) it was tough to get what I considered nice pictures.

Here's what it looked like:

And the table:

Recently we took down all of the glass shelves, patched the holes and repainted. This gave me a blank canvas with which to start and I decided to go ahead and build a shooting table I had been thinking about for some time. With my old one, it was a pain to take portraits of any kind because it required me to take the whole table down or out of the way. I wanted to have a table I could fold up out of the way.

So, I took the new blank wall and devised a plan:

I had an old desk top from a desk we tore down laying in the garage. It was the right width and depth to make a shooting table. I used stud finder and found 4 studs that would work for me. I went to home depot and had them cut me two boards 56" long. I primed and painted them to match the wall:

I took measurements and then used 9 2" coarse threaded screws to mount one of the 56" boards to the bottom side of the desk top. I came down from the top on purpose. Then I used the board to draw me a level line on the wall for where I would mount the second 56" board.

Once I had the studs marked, I drilled some pilot holes and then screwed 8 3" coarse threaded screws into 4 studs. Because of the odd placement of the studs, I had to mount the board 3" off center. Not enough to can really notice. Once I had the board mounted, I screwed in 4 door hinges over the studs for more of a secure mount.

Once that was done, I went back to the desk top. I then propped the table up on the board mounted to the wall and had my wife measure the two cut pieces from the 56" boards. I cut these down for legs and used the remnants of the two blocks at each end, 2" in. One on the right and one on the left. I set the one on the left back a full 2x4 width. I then put a third block in the middle. Once that was done, I mounted two more hinges to those blocks and then the legs to the hinges. This gave me folding legs. The middle block was for the ends to rest one. I also crudely screwed a couple pieces of rubber backed carpet to the ends of the legs to keep from scratching the wood floors.Open:Closed:

After that, I then mounted the desk top to the board along the wall and screwed the hinges to the board under the desk top. Here it is collapsed against the wall:Here it opened up:

I put down some extra foam core I had. Kinda had to piece it together. Then used some PVC I had left from my old table for the background support.

The next part is a secret.

Here's the first pic I took on it. I wanted something long that I couldn't take pics of (easily) on my smaller table:

Took me part of last night and most of today to prep, paint and mount everything. Total cost for the everything was $35 INCLUDING the paint (mis-mix from Lowes). Right now, I'm pretty happy with it. Still plan on a set of background stands and some Muslins.